In the latter half of 2014, Google made some pretty significant changes to its local search algorithm, upending the factors that influence local rankings. Business owners need to pay attention to three areas in particular if they want to generate new customers from online search:
1. Maintain Your Yelp Account! Yelp review listings will be appearing more prominently in Google’s local search results, particularly for searches containing “Yelp”, like “yelp delis in soho.” If you have not claimed your business on Yelp, now more than ever it is important to do so, or risk not being aware of negative reviews that will appear prominently in search results. Make sure you respond quickly to one-star reviews, politely addressing the specifics behind customers’ disappointments. In some cases, an apology may be in order to salvage customer trust.
2. Optimize Location Identifiers. Include informal and formal neighborhood names on your website and in business listings. Google’s knowledge of local neighborhood names has expanded, so having these in your content will ensure that your business shows up for these hyper-local searches. New York city has lots of informal neighborhoods within wider established neighborhood names. Harlem, for example, can be divided up into 6 geo-distinct neighborhoods: Sugar Hill, Strivers' Row, Astor Row, Marcus Garvey Park, East Harlem and Le Petit Senegal.
3. Maintain Directory Listings. NAP (name, address, phone) consistency is being weighted more heavily. Identify inconsistencies and duplicates across general and specialized directories (there are a lot of them) and search engines. Inconsistencies can be identified quickly using LocalBizNYC's Biz Listing Scan.
1. Maintain Your Yelp Account! Yelp review listings will be appearing more prominently in Google’s local search results, particularly for searches containing “Yelp”, like “yelp delis in soho.” If you have not claimed your business on Yelp, now more than ever it is important to do so, or risk not being aware of negative reviews that will appear prominently in search results. Make sure you respond quickly to one-star reviews, politely addressing the specifics behind customers’ disappointments. In some cases, an apology may be in order to salvage customer trust.
2. Optimize Location Identifiers. Include informal and formal neighborhood names on your website and in business listings. Google’s knowledge of local neighborhood names has expanded, so having these in your content will ensure that your business shows up for these hyper-local searches. New York city has lots of informal neighborhoods within wider established neighborhood names. Harlem, for example, can be divided up into 6 geo-distinct neighborhoods: Sugar Hill, Strivers' Row, Astor Row, Marcus Garvey Park, East Harlem and Le Petit Senegal.
3. Maintain Directory Listings. NAP (name, address, phone) consistency is being weighted more heavily. Identify inconsistencies and duplicates across general and specialized directories (there are a lot of them) and search engines. Inconsistencies can be identified quickly using LocalBizNYC's Biz Listing Scan.
RSS Feed
